Jon Stewart Takes Democrats to Task for Political Buffoonery

On last night’s episode, Jon Stewart did something that rarely happens in the TV world of “investigative joke-alism”: he followed up on a story he’d previously reported. Stewart checked back in with the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as attorney general, which has been blocked by Republicans because Democrats refuse to pass an anti-sex trafficking bill with an anti-abortion provision.

It’s the kind of power play that’s become all too familiar in our gridlocked Congress, but some Democrats are attributing Republican stalling to racism (Lynch is the first African-American woman to be nominated for the position). Illinois Senator Dick Durban went so far as to say she’s being “asked to sit in the back of the bus when it comes to the Senate calendar.” Stewart quickly shut down that analogy, pointing out that 82 of the 168 filibusters of presidential nominees for office have occurred during the Obama administration. “They don’t need a reason to hold up an Obama nominee; it’s part of their daily routine. You wake up, you go to work, you pledge allegiance to the giant poster of Reagan and Jesus riding a horse together…and spend the rest of the day blocking an Obama appointee.”